I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Channels! (400th Video Celebration)

[00:00:09]Hello and welcome to the 400th video.

[00:00:13]For this occasion, someone suggested I go back and re-evaluate the first video I made. That's an idea I rather liked because after 10 years, my critical perspective may have changed. Or maybe nowadays, I'd approach a topic from a slightly different angle. Either way, I thought it was an interesting challenge.

[00:00:32]So, that's exactly what I'm going to do.

[00:00:35]But there's a twist. If you go to the list of videos on this channel and scroll all the way to the bottom, you'll see a Miracle Man retrospective is the first video. But my little Theans, that's not the first comic book video I did. It's just the first one publicly available. And it's a survivor of a purge of early videos I deleted years ago because they were too embarrassing to exist.

[00:00:58]chronologically according to the archive of produced scripts I've kept. The first video I wrote and uploaded was I shall destroy all the civilized planets by Fletcher Hanks. Once I discovered that, I knew I had my perfect anniversary subject. After all, it kind of embodies everything this channel has become over the last decade. It's an obscure topic that no one gives a [ __ ] about. Yet, for whatever reason, I feel compelled to make a video about it. There's some personal insight for you. My passion is my burden. It's how I decide what to do every week. Whether it's algorithm friendly or trending or hyperbolic enough to get attention doesn't enter my mind. These videos are me examining why I find something compelling and then trying to communicate that interest to you. So, unintentionally, I buried a time capsule a decade ago. Now, it's time to dig it up and see what bizarre artifact I left behind for my future self. For me, this will be a trip down memory lane, but for the majority of you, this will be something brand new.

[00:02:01]Patreon members can see the entire original video. While I will do a little summary at the end of this video, Patreon supporters can do a direct comparison and see the differences.

[00:02:11]Yes, there are parts I cringe at, but that's to be expected. It was made by someone who quite literally had no idea how to make an engaging video using static comic book images.

[00:02:22]Anyway, on to the 400th video.

[00:02:30]I have to admit, when I started reading I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets by Fletcher Hanks, I became reasonably certain the material was an elaborate hoax. The artwork was rudimentary and surreal. The stories were bizarre, and the obscure nature of the writer/art Fletcher Hanks all sounded too weird to be true. Also, his name totally sounds like a comic book villain. I mean, take a look at this guy and tell me I'm wrong. That's a fiend with a scheme fully formed in his mind.

[00:02:59]He's just waiting for the right moment to strike.

[00:03:02]The stories in this compilation were all produced during the golden age of comics. At the time, this medium had just evolved from being reprints of newspaper strips to providing new material now found in the funny pages.

[00:03:15]Then in 1938 came the first superhero, Superman. Publishers scrambled to find material to compete with the successful creation and to cash in on the newly created superhero genre.

[00:03:28]Standards for content were pretty low.

[00:03:30]There were no guidelines to follow and the censorship board, the Comics Code Authority, did not yet exist. In other words, the language of the medium was still being created. So for most publishers, if a story was legible, they printed it.

[00:03:45]In this environment came Fletcher Hanks, someone who learned cartooning through a correspondence course. He wrote, drew, inked, and lettered a total of 51 stories between 1939 and 1941.

[00:03:58]He mainly focused on Stardust, the super wizard, and Phantoma, mystery woman of the jungle. Although he did work on other characters like Buzzrandle of the Space Patrol, and the lumberjack, Big Red Mlane.

[00:04:11]Notably, like many other creators from that period, Hanks used a number of pseudonyms.

[00:04:16]Probably his most famous creation, Phantom, a superherooin that predated Wonder Woman, was signed as Barkley Flag, although it's clearly the work of Hanks.

[00:04:27]Hanks stopped making comics suddenly in 1941 and disappeared into total obscurity.

[00:04:33]35 years later in 1976, he was found frozen to death on a park bench in Manhattan, presumably after an evening of drinking himself stupid. It was a tragic end, and like far too many golden age creators, his work went unrecognized, unappreciated, and he lived in poverty during his final years.

[00:04:52]However, the only source for this biographical information about Fletcher Hanks came from his estranged son, Fletcher Hanks Jr.

[00:05:00]Junior recalls that his father was an abusive drunk that abandoned his family in 1930. They had no contact after that and Fletcher Hanks frozen fate was told to Junior secondhand. So, its validity is a bit suspect.

[00:05:14]All of this background information made me very suspicious about the existence of Fletcher Hanks. It all seemed too weird to be true. He created a body of work, disappeared without a trace, and then only reappeared as a frozen corpse decades later. put in those terms, it sounds a little scripted. In fact, a search for more information about the man will get you the same information over and over again, and none of it predates the publication of I shall destroy all the civilized planets, where all this information was first published. That is, as a skeptical mind might say, rather suspicious.

[00:05:50]It wasn't until I ran across Comic Book Plus, an archive of public domain comics that I finally believed Fletcher Hanks had existed and had produced these comics. Within that archive, you can find the work of Hanks squeezed between the work of other contemporary artists.

[00:06:04]So, the possibility of an elaborate hoax was quite unlikely.

[00:06:09]I mean, someone would have to go to a lot of work producing hundreds and hundreds of pages of material just to establish one obscure artist. Possible, sure, but highly unlikely.

[00:06:20]So there was no doubt that Hanks existed, created all this work, and then for some reason left the medium and disappeared.

[00:06:27]Everything after just has to be taken at face value because honestly it doesn't stretch believability. It's not hard to believe that a forgotten artist with a drinking problem came to a tragic end.

[00:06:38]It is unfortunately not that uncommon.

[00:06:46]The writing and artwork of Fletcher Hanks is formulaic and substandard while also being batshit crazy and surreal.

[00:06:53]The stories have a certain hard to define appeal to them. It's like they're completely pure and completely incompetent at the same time. It's a surreal experience that's both terrible and fantastic. You can easily be hypnotized by this contradiction.

[00:07:08]Take the Stardust story for example. The mastermind, Destru, hatches a plan to acquire all of America's wealth by suffocating everyone with power and money. Despite watching this plan go into action, Stardust doesn't do anything until a number of people die a horrible death. Stardust then comes to Earth and revives all the dead. I mean, that works, but not letting them die might have been a better solution.

[00:07:33]With the crisis passed, Stardust focuses on the villain. He zaps Destructor with a ray that makes his head grow and absorb his body. Stardust grabs his disembodied head, takes him to a space pocket of death, whatever that is, and throws the villain's head onto the body of a headless giant. Destru is absorbed into the giant. In a final twist, Stardust rounds up all of Destru's henchmen, combines them into one body, and sends that body into space. The end.

[00:08:03]What the hell? Let's look at a Phantom story, too.

[00:08:07]Mark Lord, a wealthy man with too much free time, decides that civilization has failed. So, he resolves to make New York the most univilized city on the planet.

[00:08:17]To that end, he captures 50,000 Panthers, then bombs New York and releases the Wild Panthers to roam the streets and cause mayhem. Fanta, who's been watching this develop, finally steps in. She telekinetically raises all the panthers in the villain into the sky before transporting them back to the jungle.

[00:08:35]She transforms the bad guy into a caveman to live out his last remaining moments with the panthers he abducted.

[00:08:41]The end.

[00:08:48]All the Stardust and Phantom stories follow the same plot. An elaborate crime is planned and explained. The criminals begin their devious plan and are caught in the act. The criminals are then punished in a manner appropriate to the crime.

[00:09:03]They are very simplistic but surreal morality plays and honestly the method of justice is very reminiscent of Michael Flecher's infamous Spectre run from the 70s. They were appropriate punishments for devious crimes.

[00:09:17]In my opinion, Hanks didn't write a script beforehand. I think he wrote and drew each panel as he went along, only knowing he had to fill about five pages with something a kid might want to read.

[00:09:27]It's imaginative stuff, but it all exists in a very slim area of creativity that explores the same theme over and over again.

[00:09:35]That theme being, if you do something wrong, you will be punished by an overpowered being, which may be a subconscious and unintentional illusion to Catholic values. Be good and do no evil. If you don't, you'll be punished.

[00:09:49]In this case, both Stardust and Fanta are the omnipotent beings passing judgment on your actions.

[00:09:55]This simplified morality lacks any form of subtlety or nuance. It's straightforward and childlike, and perhaps that gives the material a certain naive charm.

[00:10:06]Considering the era these comics were created, it's probably unfair to look too hard at the work with a critical eye.

[00:10:12]Most material was cranked out for a paycheck, and quality was less important than quantity. And that's what I see when I look at I shall destroy all the civilized planets. Hanks kind of didn't care about what he was doing. There's no passion. There's no attempt to improve his artwork. And his writing is consistently adequate. It lacks the joy a creative person feels when they finally get the chance to make a living in their chosen profession.

[00:10:36]Which isn't to say it isn't interesting, but it makes you wonder what Hanks could have accomplished had he tried to develop his style and produce work he could be proud of. His art had a Basil Wolverton flare, but he also needed a Jack Cole sense of purpose.

[00:10:50]I don't know. Perhaps that characterization is wrong. Perhaps the passion is unformed and still developing much like the actual work itself.

[00:10:59]Had Hanks not disappeared and presumably found absolution at the bottom of a liquor bottle. He may have gone on to produce some influential work.

[00:11:07]Unfortunately, whatever potential he had disappeared in 1941 and expired with him in 1976.

[00:11:14]All we have is speculation over what's preserved and archived. Everything else is elusive stardust.

[00:11:27]Honestly, I changed very little from the original. Structurally, it's identical.

[00:11:32]All I did was break it into sections and add chapter titles so it conformed to my modern style.

[00:11:38]That said, I did do a pretty heavy writing pass. A decade ago, I recall long- form videos not being a thing.

[00:11:46]Nowadays, it's far more common. Back then, I kept things pretty tight, and I didn't elaborate too much. I hit the basics and moved on. So, the biggest change was filling in a few spaces and clarifying some points without worrying about how long the video was running. I let it breathe. Otherwise, yeah, the original script wasn't too bad, if I do say so myself. The biggest change was removing a dramatic reading of the Stardust story. For one, I couldn't recreate it because I'm pretty sure I used music from oldtime radio shows.

[00:12:20]Back in the day, you could get away with that. Nowadays, that would get you a copyright strike, even though technically all radio shows prior to 1975 or public domain. Still, the music is a gray area, and it's not worth it to tempt fate. Another reason is the dramatic reading is quaint, but kind of bad. It amuses me, but the pacing is a bit rough, and it really feels like filler to me. Anyway, early on, I decided to stop trying to be an amusing dancing monkey. I thought I'd try to be informative rather than entertaining.

[00:12:54]Honestly, I don't have the confidence to put on a performance. I think that's pretty obvious in well, everything I've done. I'm far more comfortable being a disembodied voice reading a script. So, critically speaking, the original is kind of embarrassing, but if I'm fair with myself, the content of it wasn't too bad. It's the presentation that was awful. That's the way it goes when you don't know what you're doing, but you have the drive to do it anyway.

[00:13:22]I'd like to, if I may, end on a positive note. This relates to 10 years of experience grinding out videos and running a channel that exists in relative obscurity.

[00:13:33]You don't need permission to work on creative projects. There's no committee you need to apply to and justify why you want to make videos or draw comics or whatever. This is why the argument that AI democratizes art has always been [ __ ] You don't need a degree or validation from some authority to do what you want to do. You just do it. Sit down and do the goddamn work. Yeah. Do you think I want to spend 40 or 50 hours on one damn video? No, I'd rather be playing City of Heroes or hanging out with a big titty goth girl. Is it tiring and at times tedious? Hell yeah. But you know what? That's the way it goes, princess.

[00:14:16]Yes, you're going to make sacrifices, and at times it'll feel like you're throwing your work into a void where it's never seen again. Boohoo! Too mother loving bad. Move on to the next project and hope for a better result. If there's anything you remember from this video, I hope it's that. Thank you for watching. Have an amazing day. Go be creative and have fun.

[00:14:46]Thanks again. I just spent a lot of time talking about myself, and if I were you, I'd probably be tired of hearing anymore. So, I'll just thank everyone here on YouTube and Patreon. I really appreciate that ongoing support.

[00:15:00]Extra special thanks to Andrew Barton, Art Conway, Brian Deon, Chapel Pluto, Connor Galis, Constant Disappointment Records, Corey Drew, Cult Classic, Doug Everly, Edward Clayton, Andrew, Francis Da Cruz, Jeff Nicholson, John Gaunt, John Nyukes, John Woolham, Matt Marino, Michael Shelton, Odin Ashcraftoft, Phil Sean, Plutocy, Russell Bull, Scott Smith, Chad Miller, Sicken, and Tom Granis. You are all justified and ancient.

[00:15:48]There I lightly took advantage of a girl who loved me so.